


Six Hundred and Sixty-Six Words

by thaliaarche



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Atheism, Drabble Collection, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Illness, Religion, Religious Extremism, Satanism, Self-Hatred, Wordcount: 666
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaliaarche/pseuds/thaliaarche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six 111-word drabbles about fire, falling, and those times Sebastian Michael Landers met Ciel in a park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Just six little drabbles, but please look the tags over anyway, because things get rather serious. Perhaps it goes without saying, but the views of my characters do not necessarily represent my own opinions.

Two six-year-olds would meet in their neighborhood’s park everyday and play “House.” Ciel was always Father. Sebastian was always Mother.

Father did business at the sandbox— he claimed a six-year-old’s dream job, declaring himself the head of a toy and candy company that doubled as a spy agency. At home, Mother cooked and cleaned, brushing tanbark dust off the play structure. Then Father came home, and Mother laid before him a massive and entirely imaginary feast, where every dish had a fancy French name neither could actually pronounce.

One time, Sebastian’s parents saw Father kissing Mother goodbye before he left for the office.

Immediately, their fiery anger brought House crumbling down.


	2. II

Claude is the high school running back, tall, well-muscled, yet lithe enough to elude his opponents.

Falling into bed, Sebastian clutches his pillow and moans, admitting that man rouses downright sinful desires in him. Then Sebastian thinks of how Alois has been bullied into becoming a knife-wielding sadist, how Angelina moved away, how the Sutcliff boy— girl— took a razor and . . .

Sebastian can _feel_ God damning him.

He sleeps, tossing and turning, then shoots upright as Claude strides into his dreams, chest bare, chiseled, gorgeous.

Sebastian tries fantasizing about Lizzie instead. He feels nauseous.

He’s curled inward by dawn, rocking, crying for a six-year-old boy who kissed him in a park.


	3. III

Sebastian fights to distract himself, deny himself. Every morning, he wakes up at 6, runs six miles, and eats a banana for breakfast. Lunch is half a ham sandwich.

He stays late at track practice, though his legs falter, burning from overexertion. He drives home after dark, squinting through rain, slamming the gas, then the brakes. Coming in, he nods to his parents and grabs another banana, sprints upstairs and locks himself in his room with his books.

He writes papers. He solves limits. He codes, breaking problems into tiny steps, his computer cranking out answers at superhuman speed.

At midnight, he throws himself into sleep, hopefully too weary to dream.


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian turns skeptical.

Sebastian hurls himself into his routines, into the “perfect student” aesthetic. Yet the damned desires persist, now fused with exhaustion and hunger.

He cannot belong here, cannot survive here. So Sebastian starts dreaming of heights, of towering far above this small, small-minded town, of flying, of falling . . . Of snapping his neck.

(It’s a clean, efficient method— well, not for those who’ll have to wipe up the mess left behind, but that won’t be his concern.)

Satanism breaks his fall— LaVeyan Satanism, its cool, atheistic rationality easily discovered through the internet. Religion rings in Sebastian’s bones still, whispering he is possessed, yet he is certain his mind is his own.

Doubts re-emerge.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a tumblr! Finally! Come check it out at [thaliaarche.tumblr.com](https://thaliaarche.tumblr.com/).


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know how demons don't like being in churches?

Each Sunday, Sebastian buttons down his white, long-sleeved shirt and dons pressed black slacks. He forces himself into the car; his father drives. They sit straight-backed and silent.

Sebastian seethes inside the church, as if the very place repels him. Perhaps faith is a positive force somewhere, but these hypocrites say “love” and mean “hate.” Behind a stony expression, Sebastian critiques, deconstructs, demolishes their pious rhetoric. He daydreams about burning it all down and nearly bursts out laughing.

The mirth disappears once they command him to pray for his loved ones. He cannot laugh, yet, at the fact that prayer is a hollow lie.

Their unwitting dishonesty prickles on his skin.


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where has Ciel been?

Spurred on by foolish hope, Sebastian shows himself— rational, nihilistic, loving men— to his father.

“You’ve got the devil in you.”

And if Sebastian still believed in afterlives at all, he’d swear Ash is the hellish one— his father growls, vicious as a Fury, whipping him with a black leather belt. “Why? Why?”

Sebastian smiles.

He’s doubted for eternities, starting that night crazy Vincent sank himself in drink and took a torch to the house, since Sebastian himself prayed that Ciel might escape, somehow. Anyone could have answered— saints or angels or the Devil himself— yet Ciel is dead.

So, Sebastian laughs as the blows keep falling, God is dead too.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I had three ice-skating sequels, a fic set in Hell, a Shinigami spy thriller, a sickfic, a Tea Shop AU, and a Kuro-Marvel-HP crossover already on my Black Butler WIP list . . . So of course my brain promptly made me finish up this old story. Figures.
> 
> This specific view of Sebastian bleeds into much of my other Kuro writing, and will probably continue to do so for a long time. "Six Hundred and Sixty-Six Words" provides the theoretical underpinnings for my Sebastian fic, if you will.
> 
> Kudos and comments are most appreciated!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [666](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8370778) by [Shameless_Weeb_Lacking_A_Filter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shameless_Weeb_Lacking_A_Filter/pseuds/Shameless_Weeb_Lacking_A_Filter)




End file.
